On Christmas Eve, I went over to Emily’s house already dressed in my pajamas, breaking a solemn vow I had made to myself years ago that I would never leave my home in PJS, unless of course, I was wearing them under other clothes.

We started drinking, did a Yankee Gift Swap where at least two of us ended up going home with the gifts we brought (apparently Anne and I are bad gift-pickers. I maintain that my gift, a trio of L’Occitane hand creams would have been awesome for anyone other than the solitary dude in our midst who almost burst into tears when he opened it and thereby almost made it a holiday), and then made a pilgrimage to the Peppermint Christmas House, where in the car, Rachel and I both grabbed Evan’s ass while reaching to put on our seatbelts and he socked me in the arm, the fading bruise a constant reminder to me about the price of safety.

^{Rachel got lube for Christmas, so I suppose remarks about her Sahara-like vaginal canal are no longer appropriate, if in fact they ever were.}

The Peppermint Christmas House is one of those houses with the lights strung to sync with music, which you can listen to by tuning into a radio station. I felt the best way to demonstrate how festive the whole shebang made me feel was to get out and dance in front of the house. Emily joined me, Evan started shouting something indiscernable, and it was a Christmas Miracle the police weren’t called.

On our way back to the house, we noted that the RiteAid was open, and found ourselves with an opportunity to do…something.

This something involved buying Franzia in our pajamas. Franzia, swirly straws, and pop rocks.

^{I was kind of mesmerized by these bags. Do you really need a special storage bag for all of these things? Are all of these bags that different? All of my groceries go into The Forgotten Pit at the bottom of the refrigerator until they turn into science experiments.}

We didn’t stay up much beyond that–I had to run home to let Napoleon out, so I missed out on about an hour of what everyone got up to, and when I got back, we watched A Christmas Story. Given the sounds that Evan was emitting upstairs (chainsaw followed by some sort of yelping whimper?!), I elected to sleep downstairs on the couch. Emily’s kitty, Luger, elected to also sleep downstairs on the couch, namely, on the part of the couch containing my face. I’d wake up every twenty minutes or so, choking and gasping, my mouth full of cat fur, and hear four cat paws hitting the carpet as Luger realized that yet another attempt to smother me to death was fruitless. 7am has never come so early in my life. And during all of that, somehow Santa still managed to sneak past me and do his Santa-ing business!

We had gifts not only from Santa, but also from Mrs Claus and Shaky the Elf at the Methadone Clinic. Some of these givers elected to wrap their gifts in glitter paper, which does not merely come off the paper when one unwraps a gift, but explodes off of it like it was a glitter bomb, a natural disaster of glitter. Glitter was everywhere–on our clothes, in our hair, on the carpet, on the couch, covering the cats and dog…I myself had so much glitter around my mouth in particular that it looked like I’d spent Christmas morning eating out a stripper named Sparkles.

After we’d ripped into our stockings and the gifts from the various citizens of the north pole, we exchanged the gifts we’d gotten for each other. There was so much gift-unwrapping going on that while I didn’t get to see everything that everyone got, I did watch carefully to see when people opened mine. Everyone seemed to really like what I got them, which thrills me as it’s such a disappointment to put thought into a gift and have it ill-received. Emily loved her scarf (and she’s worn it ever since, so I know she wasn’t bluffing), Anne loved the book I got her about the civil war (one she hadn’t read!), and Evan actually squealed in delight when he opened the box set of grindhouse movies I’d gotten him–“Oh my god! Kung fu death punch!?”. So far everything I’ve given has been well-received…there are three more sitting under my tree that have yet to meet their destined owners, but I can’t imagine that there’s a loser among that bunch, so I will go ahead and declare this a successful year of gift-giving!

Evan got me “Dragon Wars” on blu-ray, explaining that he and and friend had gone out to find me the absolute worst movie they could find–he started at one end, the friend started at the other, and somewhere in the middle, an angelic choir sang and a light shone down from heaven or some indoor spotlight, whichever fits more in tune with your personal religious beliefs, and lo, there was Dragon Wars.

We had breakfast, played with the dog for a while, and then I had to pack up my things and leave. First I went home, to feed Napoleon and let him out, and then I went to girlpirate‘s house, where I spent the rest of the day. We hung out, chatted, played about a million rounds of Angry Birds on her new ipad, watched Christmas Vacation, and she made me some gorgeous jewelry. She said she likes my eye for color and design, and we’re going to work together to make some new pieces for her store.

All in all, it was a very lovely Christmas with my chosen family.